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World of Tanks Barracks flooded with rental crews

I believe it’s time that I write about how badly designed and outdated the Barracks in WoT are.

Since I bought the MT-25, I got a new appreciation for the Light Tank class in World of Tanks so recently decided to start grinding a few new tech lines but I found an annoyance which many of you are also having: The Rental crews have overcrowded my Barracks!

Last night, I found out I had over 100 crew members that had been accumulating (without consent).

I don’t have the habit of transferring my crews around given that I got decent ones in all my commonly played tanks but that changed with the LTs, I have a really sweet crew in my Chaffee that I would like to transfer to my M7 but I am unable to at the moment, for example.

I do really appreciate the fact that Wargaming has decided to gives us those crews, they come with some nice base XP and special perks even but when they started making these rental missions they should have put some thought into updating the Barracks system as well. It is clear by the number of complaints that can be found around in the forums and other areas that this should have been done long ago.

This is such a common issue that I just by Googling “WoT Barracks” this is what comes up:

I suggest Wargaming do the following:

Stop playing the recruiter! Give players a consent option to whether they want a specific rental crew or not, this can be easily done by adding an extra tab on the pop-up “news/what’s up” when you log into the garage. It won’t clutter that way and there won’t be an extra dialogue boxes to close down.

or

Put them in tents or build a Rental Barrack! This goes again with giving the player the decision to keep the rental crew or not but instead, the crew are automatically sent into a separate area that won’t fill up our standard Barracks. The Rentals could remain in those Barracks until decided to be turned into a “standard crew”.

Other ideas

“Put that on the tab!” Options, options! We need browsing more browsing options in the barracks:

Separate the crew by sexes. The company made female crews a big deal, so much so they even have their own “Sisterhood of Steel” so it seems only logical that there should be a search option for male and female separately. I personally only realised I had a female crew being unused after I just happened to casually scroll through the Barracks, for example.

Add the option to show and delete stock crews at 50%. A lot of other games have option to delete trash items from inventory, so why cant we?

I made the math, it would cost me over 2k gold to get enough Barrack’s space without having to go throught the hassle of deleting crews, I have plenty of gold in my account that is for sure but I am speaking for those who do not. Plus, there’s always the option to delete the crew and tank from the garage but such rentals are not that visible when the player has plenty of tanks and especially if he/her doesnt not care about missions with rental vehicles to stay updated about such.

I doubt this is the reason why the Barrack overhaul has been neglected for so long but it definetly feels like a very cheeky way of making the players spend and buy gold just to save themselves from going trought a badly/outdated interface.

Those suggestions alone can make such a difference.

If you have extra suggestions make sure to type them in the comment section, these are just the ones from the top of my mind and would love to read your take on this.

The pc also has that in World of Warships. At first I was really against it, but the more I played it, the more I realised it was a much better option. It completely eliminates those stupid extra crew members (like a radio operator) one has to keep around for certain premium tanks…

This is something I am talking about for a long time.
WG instead of redesigning UI in one or two big swipes just plays “let’s make the illusion of constant progress” game and we end with 3 or even 4 generations of UI mixed together just in the garage.
Here we have square windows, here we have drop-down menus, here we have borderless screens with closing X in the corner overlaying the garage etc. etc.
I understand that some players do not like changes, but for God’s sake, you cannot paint a car painting only 1/10th of it every half year (unless it is an artistic performance/installation).

Interesting read, I haven’t had much thought about this subject for some time. I clean out my barracks every time I buy a premium tank or transfer crews which is about every three months or so. I’ve just been in that habit since the Karl event, and all the tier ten rentals. I ended up just making a bigger barracks and keeping the rental crews since they had perks on them. I do agree though. The system is outdated and definitely needs a revamp. I like the ideas so far, another one would be clean up the UI and put the tank symbols or class on the crew members to easily scroll through them and know what crews you have sitting around. It would make it simpler and easier to spot crews on tanks you once loved but where sadly sold.

Honestly, when the WE comes, I often have to delete a lot of 50% crews in the barracks just to make room to allow my usual crews to move from one tank to another (between premium and regular tanks… as I noticed the engine consider that the crew is going trough the barracks during a 1 sec before reaching the next tank… inoffensive yet useless feature but it becomes a hurdle when you get a lot of free crew you never ask for).

I must also say that I have in my barracks tons of 100% crews that I got in the early rentals when they fuck up someting and gave us wrongly experienced crews… hahaha

I don’t have any idea about those rental crews. I’ve never got a rental tank and I either deleted or moved the special crews into new tanks.
I guess I’m just a more casual player and I do more housekeeping lol

Given all the faulty mechanics in the game, to have WG working on a barracks UI system seems a less than useful application of time and effort. I am more concerned about HE rounds on derp guns that are making the skill of angling one’s armor completely useless. Why wouldn’t someone just take that tank with the huge HE derp gun when they can pop a non-penetrating round into the front of a heavy tank and do just about as much or more than the opposite number using AP, APCR, HEAT rounds that they have to aim into weak spots. Or the fact that high tier light tanks have worse standard view range than the mediums of the tier. So many things are mechanically and logically wrong with the game that this seems like a rather small issue by comparison.

I did notice this happening, however, and had to spend a good deal of time removing them from my barracks. A suggestion that would make the existing barracks system a bit more manageable with minimal effort would be to sort the crews by experience percentage. This would put all your 50% crews together so that you don’t have to go looking for them and you can delete to your hearts content. The UI for barracks is something that could use some work, but for now I think WG has bigger fish to fry.

Dismissed all 50% crew. Keep only +100% plus perks and skilled crew in non premium tanks. Emptied all premium tankctankcrew with no 50%. Use premium tanks only to grind crew from non premium tanks. Crew in barracks with 100% and 1 perk/skill in training. Have only crew in tier 4,6,7,8,9 tanks (have no tier 10 yet). When I grind to a higher tier tank previous crew transfers to highest tier, and each lower tier go in tank of 1 tier higher. And crew in tier 4 tank gets crew from barracks with 100% + or new crew, and grinding starts again.😩😊

I used tier 4 soviet barn tank as a barrack (t28?) and several other prem and low tier tanks as a barracks. not going to pay gold, and going to use some of those crewmininions.Now someone is going to be trained to drive that new soviet light with asymmetry problem :v

Don’t have a problem with barrack crews.
What I hate is 3 tier battles the lower tier of the 3 is just a target.
All match should be two tier combos
Premium tanks at the bottom of a 3 tier match is not what Wot said when they promote using you money for crap.
Or what you buy gets NERFD.
Bottom line is WOT thinks they are to big

I agree it is very annoying that you must periodically clean your barracks, and the alternative is wasting gold to accommodating crews you aren’t sure will be used in future. I think WG should give an option whether you want to keep the rental crew or not when rental period is over.

Sorry I dont see this as an issue, if players cant do a bit of house clean in a game why should WoT do it for them.

I tend to keep a limited number of crews, transfering them to a new tank in the tech tree once its researched. If i decide i will keep a tank I will put a new crew in it. Once in a while going through each nations baracks and removing unwanted (No skills crew).

The same goes for my equipment when you sell a tank you have excess kit. I go through this and can often make 1M credits.

WG is probably not to keen on changing it. If the idea to make your baracks full was not the main motivator to begin with with the rental tanks. Think about it. A lot of people will simple assume that they need more space and buy more beds for gold without ever checking the issue for the lack of space.

Advice:

– Always buy garage slots over barack slots. Then buy a low tier tank and put the crew in that tank. That way your garage slots double as barack slots. When you one day need that garage slot, you also will have still a tank that requires a crew so that it still will make more beds available. While this method does have limits, it is a huge help in keeping your barack small.

– If you receive a 100 % crew from rentals or any other source, consider if you ever are going to buy that tank in the future. If not, then there is no reason not to dismiss the crew or to retrain it for another tank.

Considering how well WOT is doing they could also remove the need for something as pointless as barrack slots. I dislike the garage slots immensely, and feel its a money grab, but the barracks are the worst. Of course the shitty UI adds to that, but still stuff like that and the vehicle mastery for tanks below tier 5 should be removed. (That vehicle mastery is extremely punishing for new players, or if you like me start playing a new nation and don’t want to waste gold at your crews, cause good god even a 75% crew is awfull…)

Separate the crew by sexes.
That is a very good idea. I keep a list in EXCEL on the side as it is a huge mess to find them in the barracks and tanks.
ALSO: Separate crew by those with “BIA free perk” Extremely important as these crews train faster than other crew members (I also keep a list in EXCEL for these as it is impossible to distinguish them from the others.